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Don't allow marketers to run your home page

Have you ever attempted to surf the Internet, but discovered that your home page is not set to where it used to be?

You might have discovered that your home page has been "hijacked."

This is a common strategy by hack marketers, who attempt to steer you to their product information.

It seems all information searches are being tainted. You can no longer obtain an impartial search result. The search engines will post the business that pays the most money at the top of your search. If you're a business with infinite resources, you might be able to stay at the top of the search list, but that is going to cost a lot of money. How many times have you searched for something but were presented results that you didn't request?

Browser add-ons and tool bars are another way to steer you to certain product web pages. Unless you have a valid reason for a specific toolbar, don't waste your time with nonsense toolbars. Many times you will discover that your browser has become so full of toolbars that you can't see the webpage on your screen.

The phrase, "know just enough to be dangerous," might describe the majority of hacks who consider themselves to be software engineers. Proper operating system and application coexistence depends on proper software development techniques. Anyone can learn how to write a computer program, but it takes an understanding of operating system and program relationships to write software that doesn't crash a system. Many of the junk programs on the Internet are written by hacks who have little understanding of the big picture.

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Don't waste time loading up all the free programs that are supposed to make life easier. Most of them will tie up your computer and force it to execute programs slowly. Some of those "special" programs might not allow your computer to execute.

Has Internet Explorer ever refused to start up? It might be a toolbar that won't allow it to start normally. What do you do? Click on Start, type "iexplore--extoff" in the search box, press the "enter" key. This command will start Internet Explorer in safe mode with no toolbars. All of your special add-ons and tool bars will be absent, but you might be able to use the browser. You may also find that another browser such as Firefox, Chrome or Opera will run properly when Internet Explorer will not start.

You should always exercise caution when downloading anything to your computer. Always check for comments on the Internet about a toolbar or browser add-on. It is always better to learn from someone else's mistake.

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